I was taken aback by the despair and bitterness in her voice and despite my ambivalence towards her over Domick, I said, ‘What is happening to the twins began long ago with Malik’s betrayal in the White Valley. You were not responsible for that or for their decline now. Nor can you be sure that you would have had any more success at reaching them if you had come up sooner. Indeed, you were here when Angina was first ill and you were no more able to help him then than any other healer. No one can blame you for what is happening to him and Miky now.’

Kella’s eyes were suddenly swimming with tears. ‘But you blame me for not loving Domick enough, don’t you?’

I did not know how to respond. Finally I said carefully, keeping my tone plain, ‘I wish you had cared enough to come to see him before he died. Or to speak a few words at his graveside.’

Her eyes widened in shock and she said urgently, indignantly, ‘But I would have, of course I would, if only I had heard in time that he was ill. But I left Sutrium before Iriny came over with the news that he was the plague carrier. I knew nothing of that or of his death until days and days later when Iriny came to the Brown Haw Rises where the gypsies were camped. That was after you had left by ship for Norseland and Sador and Domick had already been buried. I went, later, to see his grave and to lay flowers on it.’ Tears were now spilling down her cheeks.

‘I did not realise …’ I said, shattered by her obvious grief and regret, and full of remorse at the injustice I had done her. ‘I am sorry …’

‘Don’t,’ Kella said sharply. ‘I have been putting off coming back to Obernewtyn because I feared to face your disgust.’

I was taken aback. ‘You have just explained that you did not know what was happening to Domick, so why would I be disgusted?’

She looked searchingly at me through her tears. ‘You don’t know do you?’

‘Know what?’ I asked, bewildered.

She heaved a long breath and said in a low voice, ‘We should sit instead of standing in the hall like this. Gevan has let us have a chamber here, not that either of us has used it.’ She turned on her heel and led me into a small sleeping chamber with two low couches drawn up before a fireplace and a made-up bed against the wall. The shawl she had been wearing upon her arrival lay on the couch.